In today's rapidly improving hardware performance, many people may upgrade their entire hardware platform to the latest to enjoy a smoother user experience. However, upgrading is also a good option for people with older machines.

The economy is a limiting factor, but there are other reasons. For example, some professional or industry software may have custom motherboard encryption in a way that makes easy migration impossible. This is common in many fields, such as industrial control, finance, scientific computing software, etc.

Why Choose SSD?

For some software that does not rely on hardware such as graphics cards, the performance bottleneck is often just a contradiction between the amount of data and the speed of access. In this case, an SSD may significantly improve performance.

The hard disk interface on older machines is usually SATA, but it is difficult for consumer mechanical hard disks to achieve stable read and write performance above 300MB/s. In the scenario of frequent small file exchange, mechanical hard disks' 4K read and write performance is very poor, which becomes the bottleneck of the overall performance.

In contrast, SSD controls data reading and writing through the main control chip; there is no mechanical movement, so even when connected to the old interface such as SATA, it can still get higher performance, especially the random 4K random IOPS is better.

Difference Between SATA and mSATA  

SATA and mSATA are common solid-state drive (SSD) types that can upgrade your old computer. Both SSDs are similar in terms of storage speed and capacity, but there are some differences in terms of form factor, power consumption, and application range.

• Dimensions: SATA SSDs typically come in a standard 2.5-inch hard drive housing size that fits into most laptops’ and desktops' hard drive slots. The mSATA SSD is smaller, suitable for mSATA interfaces on some thin and light laptops, tablets, and embedded systems.

• Power consumption: In terms of power consumption, mSATA SSDs generally consume less power than SATA SSDs of the same capacity, which makes them more popular in portable devices and application scenarios that require lower power consumption.

• Scope of application: Due to differences in size and power consumption, SATA SSDs are more suitable for desktops and some more performance-demanding laptops, as they usually have larger hard disk slots and higher performance requirements. mSATA SSDs are more appropriate for lightweight laptops, portable devices, and applications requiring lower power consumption.

Conclusion

In short, upgrading an old computer with an SSD is a cost-effective solution to improve performance and extend the life of your machine. Choosing a SATA or mSATA SSD depends on factors such as form factor, power consumption, and application requirements. Regardless of the type, SSDs offer faster data access and higher overall performance than mechanical hard drives. So, whether you're looking to increase productivity or maximize the usability of your old system, investing in an SSD upgrade is a wise choice.